Theories of cognitive processing suggest specific effects result from different elaboration treatments. To test this assumption, 125 high school students were randomly assigned to read concept materials containing adjunct elaborations that varied by elaboration type (mnemonics, schematics, or metaphors) and presentation mode (verbal or visual). To…

In a study of the effects of pictorial stimuli on story recall, 64 second graders were randomly assigned to two experimental groups and two control groups. The learning materials consisted of two orally presented ten-sentence stories. The experimental subjects viewed pictures while the stories were read, and the control groups followed the printed…

A study examined whether pictures presented in advance of reading a text (advance organizers) as compared to pictures presented after reading a text (postorganizers) would significantly enhance the reader's retention of the text's content. Sixty college students rated their familiarity with six topics, then read materials presented on the three…

The purpose of this study was to test the applicability of the dual coding hypothesis to children's recall performance. The hypothesis predicts that visual interference will have a small effect on the recall of visually presented words or pictures, but that acoustic interference will cause a decline in recall of visually presented words and…

The extent to which children of two age levels use visual or name codes in recognizing similarities and differences between short words was studied. Subjects were presented with a word for .5, 1.0, or 1.5 seconds, followed immediately by a second word, and were instructed to press a key indicating whether or not the two words had the same name.…

Reports two experiments showing a possible developmental shift from memory organization based on associative criteria to an organization based on categorical criteria. Children in first, fourth, and seventh grades were given a sort/recall task with items that could be organized into groups of categorical or associative pairs. (Author/CB)

This study examined the effects of undergraduate students' cognitive style on short term recall of content information from still projected visuals of different sizes (full, one half, one quarter frame) and types (paintings, photographs, line drawings). No significant differences in the mean scores of field dependent and independent subjects was…

Nouns were presented in triads as pictures, printed words, or spoken words and followed by various types of interference. Measures of short- and long-term memory were obtained. In short-term memory, pictorial superiority occurred with acoustic, and visual and acoustic, but not visual interference. Long-term memory showed superior recall for…

Progression is an interactive mnemonic strategy using a series of five panels: the first displaying a stimulus item, the last, a response item, and the intermediate panels showing a metamorphosis from the first to the last. Adults viewing progressive displays of foreign words had significantly greater recall of meaning than those viewing…

In two studies with 50 male and 50 female undergraduates, differences in learning highly interfering paired-associate discrimination tasks were compared with or without visual mediational cues and with aural cues only. Visual mediational instruction reduced interference between similar signals and facilitated their association with the correct…

Four experiments investigated phonemic and visual similarity effects in 5- and 10-year olds. Results suggested that young children rely on modality-dependent codes, which are probably automatically activated, and do not use a speech-based memory code for drawings and words. This pattern of findings appeared to be independent of culture and…

Describes a study with undergraduate students that examined whether the appearance of graphics and other visuals in a television newscast would result in lower recall of audio content, whether such visuals would promote comprehension of each story as a whole, and whether subjects would prefer stories with visuals. (24 references) (LRW)

A study involving 16 Japanese young men (half with deafness) and 16 Irish young men (half with deafness) found that the Japanese men who were deaf outscored their English-language counterparts in memory for abstract design, due to prolonged use of a highly visual writing system. (Contains references.) (Author/CR)

A total of 90 fifth- and sixth-grade students studied a map of the fictitious island while twice listening to a 1,100-word prose passage describing it. The description included 16 nouns that had been chosen as map features. Map features were identified by labels and icons. Afterwards, students were given a cued recall test with 16 feature-related…